International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) 12th edition
September 18–November 29, 2026
From September 18 to November 29, 2026, the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) presents its 12th edition, SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT, at the Piekfabriek in Rotterdam.
For more than twenty years, the IABR has brought together designers, researchers, policymakers, knowledge institutions, and residents to examine how architecture and design can engage with urgent societal and spatial questions. This edition turns its attention to the systems that sustain everyday life—from water, energy, and materials to housing and infrastructure—and asks how they can be transformed to become fairer, more resilient, and fit for the future.
Discover more than 50 projects from the Netherlands and abroad
At the heart of SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT is an exhibition bringing together more than fifty designs, research projects, installations, films, and spatial presentations. Together, they reveal how often-invisible systems shape our living environment, where they are reaching their limits, and what alternative approaches are already emerging.
Throughout the biennale, an extensive public program brings these questions into conversation. Symposia, talks, guided tours, and smaller gatherings connect professionals, students, residents, and an international audience, creating space for exchange across disciplines and perspectives.
The biennale takes place at the Piekfabriek, part of the former Hunter Douglas industrial site in Rotterdam. As the area shifts from a site of production toward a new urban district for living and working, questions around housing, energy, materials, existing communities, and the reuse of what is already there become tangible. The site is more than a backdrop: it brings many of the questions at the heart of SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT into view.
SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT asks what architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture can contribute when the structures we depend on can no longer be taken for granted and how design can help shape the systems we need next.
The ideas underpinning the biennale are explored further in the curatorial statement, written by curators Carola Hein, Martina Muzi, and Wouter Veldhuis together with IABR artistic director Saskia van Stein. The statement reflects on the economic, ecological, and social systems that shape our lives, the role architecture can play in transforming them, and the idea of the IABR itself as a system of support for knowledge, exchange, experimentation, and collaboration.
Practical information SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT
Opening hours
Monday: Closed / Tuesday: Closed / Wednesday: 11am–5pm / Thursday: 11am–5pm / Friday: 11am–8pm / Saturday: 11am–5pm / Sunday: 11am–5pm.
Free admission on the last Sunday of every month: Sunday, 27 September / Sunday, 25 October / Sunday, 29 November.
Tickets
Regular: 12.50 EUR / Ages 18 to 30: 7.50 EUR / Up to and including age 17: free / Combination ticket (symposium and exhibition): 27.50 EUR.
